"The coexisting but morphologically disparate and distantly related Late Jurassic sauropods Camarasaurus and Diplodocus differed greatly in their anatomy related to food acquisition."

He added that growing lots of small teeth and replacing them regularly probably required a lot less energy than growing large, hard wearing teeth.

He said: "The repeated evolution of narrow-crowned teeth in sauropods appears to have been accompanied by an increase in tooth replacement rate, which would have equipped these forms with less worn teeth over their lifetimes and allowed their skulls to be lighter.

"Replacing a tooth every month reduces the number of excessively worn crowns in the functional dentition, which prolongs contact with opposing teeth and with food."